To access back issues from 1989-present. Please visit Proquest and search under the “Real Times Media” Section under “Chicago Defender”

Chicago Defender Newspaper Photograph Collection

The Chicago Defender photograph collection includes thousands of photographs published in the newspaper of African American life in the twentieth and twenty first century. Most photographs date from the 1940s to the present. Highlights include extensive documentation of desegregation and the Civil Rights movement, including 200 photographs related to the murder of Emmett Till. The collection also includes photographs chronicling the history of black Chicago Politics, Religion, and Arts and Entertainment.